ON THE ADULTERATION ON DRUGS. 
143 
practising adulterations. But farther, a considerable check 
might be imposed on the malpractices of unprincipled men in 
the wholesale trade, and also, it may be added, in the trade of 
the manufacturing chemist, by enabling the retailer, who may 
have been convicted of possessing spurious drugs, to recover 
the penalty from manufacturers or wholesale dealers, where 
he can prove that the adulterations had been practised before 
the articles left their establishments. 
Such are the measures for the prevention of adulterations, 
which appear the most easy to enforce, and most likely to 
answer their object. That difficulties will be met w T ith in 
laying down the details, and that obstacles will arise at first on 
applying them in practice, no one can pretend to deny. But 
no useful object was ever attained in a civilized, and most of 
all in a free country, without serious difficulties and obstacles 
to be surmounted. And I am not willing to allow that the 
obstacles in the present case are at all likely to prove insu- 
perable; since it will be generally conceded that the object in 
view is most important, the means obvious and practical, and 
opposition not to be dreaded where alone it might prove 
powerful, — namely on the part of retail druggists; — for it 
would be very extraordinary that they, at least the better 
class of them, should oppose a measure tending so much and 
so directly to increase their professional as well as their indi- 
vidual respectability. 
Neither on the other hand can it be imagined that the seve- 
ral checks which have been enumerated exhaust the possible 
list of corrective measures. Others will in all probability 
present themselves, when the inquiry shall have attracted 
more especially the attention of druggists both in the retail 
and wholesale trade, to whose opinion, without a doubt, great 
deference ought to be paid. Without going any farther into 
the matter, I may suggest, for example, whether means may 
not be found for preventing altogether even the importation 
of many spurious drugs, which are fabricated in foreign coun- 
tries, and which it would be exceedingly easy to detect in 
their passage through the custom house. It might also be 
